


Charm Trumps All

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Friendship/Love, Gen, Low-key
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-16 23:30:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2288612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is another warm-up piece. It's also another shot at Mycroft and Lestrade as buttoned down adult professionals. I can write some sweet, treacle-y stuff, but I have a real fondness for trying to find some level at which Mycroft in particular can be presented as being exactly as difficult and reserved as you might expect, and still getting to a bond. </p><p>I may take another pass at this at some point. It's almost tempting to rewrite it at some time and post it as a "second chapter." I don't know if I will--but there are things I like about it and things I'd like to revise. Putting both up to track the progress is tempting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charm Trumps All

See them both—not through the haze of sentiment, if you can manage it, or warped by the demands of plot. Leave meme and trope behind. Look at them logically, insofar as you are able.

Mycroft. He’s forty-four this year: he can see middle-age passing at the speed of a Japanese bullet-train, leaving vacuum in its wake. He’s not the sort of man to miss its passing, this so-called “prime of his life.” He knows every hair that falls that won’t grow in again. He sees each wrinkle as it forms. He knows his weight to within ounces. He is aware of every new joint that joins the conspiracy of age. Were he another sort he might manage to ignore the tick-tick of time, or succeed in blurring the awareness. He is not able, though. Unlike Sherlock, he deletes nothing. Unlike Sherlock he sells himself very few comforting lies.

He knows himself—his strengths and weaknesses. He knew himself to be gay and never argued that revelation. The awareness only heightens his sense of himself in the world: an outsider, even outside the comforting seraglio-confines of urban gay culture. He visits as an alien, aware of everything in the way only a non-native can be aware. He has the proper passport and identity, but the wrong personality. He only fits in as an act of disciplined theater.

He finds it ironic: a gay passing as gay, because he’s unable to simply be one of the throng.

He is no friend of Dorothy—though he can play the part.

He knows all his roles. The dutiful eldest son. The child prodigy of espionage and intrigue turned uber-administrator and consulting-profiler, the central pillar of the nation. The urban gay male, never a properly pretty twink, but able to pass as one for one brief, shining moment of his youth. Now he is too old, his quixotic, puckish features catching up with him. He watches the herd watching him watching them, and knows what they see: aging sugar daddy, queen in tasteful bespoke, a man of a certain class and culture. Good for a night, no more. The day will come when even the night will become a commodity he must purchase with fortune or favor.

It might be different if he could be one with them, join the herd. He can’t. He never could.

They wear him out—the bustle and chatter and all the interactions: thousands per minute in just one little club or pub. Mycroft tracks it all, a tense ball of hyper-vigilance, by nature, by training, by discipline, by painful experience. The winks and blinks and smiles and shifts in posture bombard him, leave him exhausted. It’s true in any tank of “goldfish,” gay or straight, upper-class or lower, men or women: it doesn’t matter. The human ape herd is awash with information passing in turbulent storms back and forth and around, and Mycroft? Mycroft can read the wind, the smallest breeze, the flutter of a leaf in the oncoming tempest.

He can read it, but too often he can’t quite understand it. Again, it is a foreign language. The only language he speaks intuitively is Holmesian, and the only other true speaker is Sherlock. Sherlock, who’s not fluent, but who’s still born to the same family, bred up to the same emotional etymologies.

Sherlock—ah, now. Sherlock is a different beast altogether. No goldfish, for all he’s slower than Mycroft. Look at him for a moment not through John’s persistently impressed eyes, but through Mycroft’s far less easily seduced understanding. Sherlock, who forever wants to play the same games as his big brother, but who can’t quite bear playing them on the same team: no, so long as there’s no equal or greater challenge to measure himself against, Sherlock must perforce forever choose to be in competition with Mycroft, not in collaboration. Moriarty? That was a unique event—a criminal mind sharp enough to allow Sherlock to let go his obsession with defeating his brother. Instead both brothers were forced into a not-entirely easy alliance to defeat Moriarty.

Once Moriarty was gone? Of course Sherlock had to take on Magnussen—and of course it quickly became a matter of proving himself independent of Mycroft—and superior. That entire Christmas fiasco was as much an attempt to give Mycroft a “present” that would prove both independence and superiority as it was an attempt to protect John Watson’s wife…or even avenge Lady Smallwood. No—it had been intended as a finger flown at Big Brother…

There were reasons Mycroft learned, over time, to deal with Sherlock at one remove whenever possible. Loathing of leg-work aside, Mycroft realizes that his very presence in a situation warps Sherlock’s behavior inescapably toward the rebellious and the perverse.

It grieves Mycroft, and frightens him. It would be so much more effective and comfortable if Sherlock would come inside Mycroft’s tent and piss out on the passing enemies…to use a rather coarse analogy, but an effective one, made more effective by the actual realities, in which Sherlock instead insisted on standing outside Mycroft’s tent and pissing in—ideally when prepared, with a full bladder and a bad temper.

Mycroft tries to stay well back, and avoid providing a target, except when he thinks either coercion will suffice, or that Sherlock in a peevish and pissy mood will better accomplish Mycroft’s goals than otherwise. The rest of the time Mycroft tries to leave Sherlock to himself—

To himself, and to his handler.

At one time Mycroft had hoped to have two handlers to deal with Sherlock: Lestrade and John Watson. Unfortunately Watson proved to be a near-total disaster, from Mycroft’s point of view. The man’s apparently incapable of deductive work, with a capacity for wrong guesses that defies even the most generous statistical averages. If there is a wrong guess, Dr. Watson will make it. Further, while he is an intelligent, educated man and an officer, emotionally he sees himself more as a grunt than as a commanding figure, more as a plebian than as a member of an elite, in constant confrontation with authority. Given a choice between encouraging Sherlock to enter Mycroft’s tent, or of dropping trou and peeing in through the tent-flaps beside Mycroft’s hell-born brat of a brother, he’ll happily join the pissing match, even knowing in advance that Sherlock can probably pee farther into that tent than John Watson ever could.

Hell…probably he’ll join Sherlock in part _because_ he can pee further into Mycroft’s tent. Which encapsulates the core problem between Mycroft and John Watson, in the end: even taking into account Mycroft’s own tactical errors in dealing with the man, the truth is John doesn’t really much like Mycroft—likes him far less, in fact, than Mycroft likes John. Mycroft can manage a rather mild fondness for Sherlock’s pet Rottweiler, after all….

John shows little sign of returning even that much affection, using Mycroft to the extent John thinks may benefit Sherlock—or spare John some unwelcome effort, freeing him up for Christmas dates or handing the druggy brother over rather than taking charge himself—while leaving him free to maintain his actual loyalty to Sherlock. Mycroft thus “enjoys” the worst elements of association with John, being held responsible for all the ugly bits, while being resented for presuming to interfere with the fun and mischief.

Thus Mycroft’s continued dependence on Inspector Lestrade…

Now, stop and consider Lestrade—a mystery, isn’t he? Married at one time; presumed to be divorced as a result of his wife’s philandering ways. An unhappy marriage, going by all evidence, even before the final separation.

Look at him…

He’s fifty, going on fifty-one. Just that bit older than Mycroft—he can see over the hill into old age, now. Even a few years ago he managed to maintain a boyish freshness that was deceptive. His hair, going solidly silver-brindle, could be seen as prematurely grey, though logic and math would suggest that it ws turning right on schedule, as reliable as leaves in autumn. He’s still lovely, but he’s crossed that invisiable dateline, and his body’s chosen to announce the passage of time with as much certainty as Mycroft’s receding hairline. The wrinkles show; the beginning of jowls, brows just beginning to go spiky and erratic. His shoulders and chest and waist are all just that bit thicker and heavier than they once were.

He lives in two worlds; that of the Met, and Mycroft’s world of espionage. He’s not technically Sherlock’s “handler,” nor is he quite properly Mycroft’s subordinate. And, yet…

He defies logic. He survives career catastrophes that would take down any other officer. His survival as DI after the scandal of Sherlock’s supposed criminal career and his presumed suicide verges on impossible….as does his continued good relationship with both DS Donovan and former forensics specialist Anderson. By all logic Lestrade should have been dismissed, or demoted, or at the very least lost most of his team—and lost them to anger and ill-will as much as expedience and group dynamic. Instead Lestrade survives, and maintains the ties, even to the extent of holding on to Anderson after his dismissal. Even remaining close to Donovan, in the face of Anderson and her rebellion against Sherlock and against Lestrade’s protection of the consulting detective. Even to the extent of maintaining ties to John Watson, at a time when John was fleeing his old friends once shared with Sherlock…

Where Mycroft stands in apparent solitude, Lestrade stands in company—defines company, weaving personalities together, forming teams and alliances, holding anchor point even for Sherlock Holmes, that erratic, difficult man.

And through it all, he holds ties to Mycroft, there in the shadows of Mycroft’s world. Look at him—the easy, sunshine man, quick to smile, acid in his snark, but always on the edge of laughter. Good natured. A bit of a buffoon, perhaps? Or…not.

Mycroft knows what he has in Lestrade; he knows the mind that swims beneath the shining sunlit surface. He knows that Lestrade is more than he appears. Where John Watson failed to meet Mycroft’s needs, Lestrade has succeeded, year after year, in a tie that carried past the years of Sherlock’s exile, surviving at strength upon Sherlock’s return.

Two strong men: look at them. Both leaders, though with different styles and manners. Mycroft is, of course, forever cool and reserved; certainly introverted; probably shy. Lestrade? Good with people, enjoying their company, companionable. Mycroft spins webs, tying individual after individual into the pattern he weaves. Lestrade, though forms families and clans; constellations of relationship that survive against all odds.

Mycroft knows this. He understands the difference between himself and Lestrade. He understood when he learned of the man through channels, when he exerted every effort to ensure the DI with the MI5 ties would be seconded to his service. He knows his own shortcomings…and he knew what Sherlock would do if he attempted any action within Sherlock’s sphere of activities.

It is shaming, in some ways, that the only way he can reliably benefit his brother is through a proxy…though as Sherlock himself points out, their mutual difficulties have more than once served to their advantage, deluding enemies into the belief that their family problems completely overshadowed their professional and familial loyalties. Still, in the end, it is Lestrade who stands as beloved brother to spindle-shanks Sherlock, in all his chaotic, madcap genius. Lestrade who is allowed to remind Sherlock of social necessities. Lestrade who cleverly, nimbly intervenes to smooth Sherlock’s way and strengthen his ties with the likes of Watson…

“Not as though you’ve any more skill than I have,” Sherlock snarls at Mycroft during one confrontation. “Who are you to tell me how to get on? You’re even less socially successful than I am.”

Mycroft could argue. He, after all, can control his temper, control his mouth. He can build his little ghostly empires of power and influence—empires Sherlock would knock down in frustration and boredom and malicious spite long before he ever made any progress. Mycroft can pick his battles…

In the end, though, he knows that Sherlock is right. Mycroft is alone—by expedience, by professional necessity, by introversion, and, in the end, by that alien element that leaves him forever on the outside looking in…an element even Sherlock does not share in full measure, as witness his bonds with so many over the past years.

Though again, he’s had Lestrade to help him—and from there, it’s snowballed somehow. Each new tie seems to add stability to the circle, with Lestrade forever there to help bind it all together in silent, near invisible support.

Mycroft can’t imagine even Lestrade succeeded similarly with him.

He thinks about it sometimes—two such different men, tied to each other thanks to Sherlock’s wayward random behavior. The Cold Wind and the Warm.

He knows who he is. He knows what he is. He knows that few could do what he does so well, so long, with such diligence. He even factors in his own pride and vanity, shoring up his defenses to protect those in his charge from his own hubris. He is careful, doing what must be done. He’s weighed lives in the balance. He’s sacrificed men and women for the greater good. He’s put aside his own feelings, as he did when the Other One, the brother unspoken, was the sacrifice.

He does not think Lestrade could do Mycroft’s job. He doesn’t count that against Lestrade—indeed, he suspects wearily that it makes Lestrade the better man—the better human being. And, yet, there are some jobs only a monster can do well. Mycroft is willing to admit himself to be the right monster for the job. A human being would screw it all up desperately. The damage would spiral out of control, the deaths would mount, the stability of nations would be put at risk…

He considers it peculiar and tragic that Lestrade is no less alone than he is. So warm a man; so loyal; so adaptable; so forgiving. How is it that Lestrade has come to the edge of old age only to find himself so solitary? No wife; no children—unless you counted Sherlock, a brother-child held in trust with Mycroft. Friends who knew nearly nothing real about him, about the layers of his life, the complexity of his years of service, about the depth of his often masked intelligence. Lestrade is kind. He’s amiable without losing that entertaining acid edge of snark that kept him from bland porridge insipidness.

And, yet, he’s alone. He’s not Sherlock’s first choice, nor John’s. He hasn’t bonded to Sally or Anderson—not in the ways you’d expect of deep friendship. He’s on good terms with everyone—Mrs. Hudson, Molly Hooper, even Anthea thinks well of him in a cheery but largely impersonal way. It’s as though the solid, muscular essence of Lestrade slips through their fingers, a wild salmon refusing to be caught by hook or net or grasping hands.

Mycroft knows that sometimes Lestrade resents him. Mycroft understands—he’s pinned the man to him professionally for years, desperate for his skills and his flexible professional standing. He’s too skilled, too useful, too loyal, too dependable to willingly release. Mycroft has done what he can to maintain a professional distance, though—to avoid infringing on the man’s life beyond necessity. Bad enough to be coopted as a minion and proxy professionally without Mycroft, the Iceman, the Cold Wind, presuming to _socialize_.

And, yet—sometimes Mycroft wonders. He knows what Lestrade does in his off-hours. Of course he does: he’s in intelligence on a level that makes it reckless insanity not to research his subordinates quite completely. He knows how often Lestrade goes to a pub after work (most nights). He knows how many pints he drinks (Two, stretched out over a long evening). He knows he gambles a little too much, but not so much as to put himself in any real danger. He knows that since the divorce the man’s hooked up with five strangers (two men, three women). He appears to have an aversion to prostitutes of any sort, though Mycroft is unsure whether the distaste is based in professional caution, moral revulsion, or emotional pride. Some men refuse to hire help.

Mycroft knows Lestrade could be far more active. Even now, as he ages, he has pull. Where Mycroft knows himself to be cold, a man few would choose out of attraction, Lestrade is warm. Appealing. He has charm, and will long after the last vestiges of youth have left him. Mycroft suspects the other man will never lack for willing bedmates. Judging by past behavior, more willing bedmates than he will actually desire.

He’s healthy—again, Mycroft is in the position to not only know that, but to be expected to know. At his level he can’t afford to miss obvious issues like agents with cancer, or Parkinson’s, or HIV, or even the flu. It’s his responsibility to know precisely what problems may arise with his subordinates. Who has debt. Who has a bad marriage. Who’s got sexual kinks that offer blackmailers opportunity. Mycroft may not eliminate such agents—but he must know the difficulties, and plan for them.

Lestrade’s difficulties? The gambling, always contained, but sometimes just barely—the man’s attracted to a bet in much the same way John Watson is attracted to people with high-risk behaviors. He drinks a bit too much, but is seldom seriously drunk, barring the rare binge once every year or so. He’s got a temper—but it burns sweet and fast and is gone. He bears few grudges. His heath is above average for his age. In his youth he tried the usual jumble of recreational drugs, but was lucky enough to avoid addiction and to leave the experimentation after seeing a few too many graphic examples of where drugs could lead him. He’s honest for a rather complicated value of honesty—one that permits him to serve MI5, Mycroft, and the Met all at once, lying just a bit to each. Lestrade is dumb like a fox—and like many foxes, if he has a single weakness, one overriding flaw, it’s the tendency to play the game foxy, rather than straight up and cards on the table. It’s too much fun to play dumb and watch other people make mistakes…

Mycroft occasionally wants to point out that if you play dumb all the time, you might in effect just as well be dumb. He’s fairly sure Lestrade would not appreciate the observation.

Mycroft knows that Lestrade takes comfort in the game of stupidity at least in part to salve the wound of seeing Sherlock and Mycroft in action. He’s a smart man dealing with being outsmarted. Playing stupid makes it easier for him to pretend it’s only a game. Just a game.

Mycroft also knows Lestrade is smart at all the ways that he and Sherlock are fools—and he knows he lies to himself about how important that is to him. He tells himself that in the end Lestrade remains a goldfish…but he knows he’s lying. He tells himself the lie doesn’t matter. He knows that’s a lie, too.

Life seems so much simpler for the goldfish. They believe their subjective truths, woven out of wish fulfillment fantasies and cognitive bias and reflexive comfort zones and trending fads. They meet and match and marry in predictable little patterns, like unto like, birds of a feather, the ugly with the ugly, the wealthy with the wealthy, the alphas with the alphas and the cheese stands alone—and they tell themselves that they each have a “one true love,” and miss the mathematical import of their own predictability. They grieve for themselves and convince themselves that they’re really grieving for others. They act out of spite and malice and envy and resentment—and assure themselves they’re acting for the public good. They live and die in self-indulgent dishonesty…but together. Part of the whole. Deluded in lockstep with their loving peers.

Even Sherlock, now.

He and Lestrade, he thinks—only they two stand alone. He smiles wryly, thinking of it: two solitary cheeses, both standing alone together.

It is easy to paint them with a romantic brush. Two spies. Two men of law. Two solitary men of honor. So different, and so alike. It would be easy to dream them with roses and wine, with golden rings and kisses under streetlamps in a soft London fog. Or perhaps not kisses—perhaps they just walk into the darkness murmuring about the start of a beautiful friendship. Not everything is romance, after all. Not everything is sex. Look at John and Sherlock—whatever they have, it’s obviously not going to easily resolve in a bedroom. Not with two such spiny, complicated men.

It will, however, end with them together somehow, Mycroft thinks. Lestrade, too, may end up in company, even if he hasn’t so far.  Charm trumps all, in the end.

Mycroft expects his own end to be solitary, though. His whole life he’s used polish and panache as a work-around for the charm he doesn’t have.

Look at him as he looks at himself: aging, alone, increasingly cut off from all social ties. He knows he’s safer because of this—that the people he might become close to are similarly safer thanks to his failure to engage. He has no illusions. He is what he is. He would not change what he is—there is too much of his life and his self he values. To change—even to become someone as charming and graceful as Lestrade—would be a form of suicide, and Mycroft is not suicidal, nor is he caught up in sufficient despair or self-loathing.

 “Good work, Lestrade,” he says, as they finish a meeting. “Excellent, as always.”

Lestrade nods amiably. “Thanks, Mycroft.” He rises and gathers his papers. “Your people will follow up, then?”

“I’ve already sent them their assignments,” Mycroft says, gesturing absently at his laptop. Commands have been springing from his fingertips to all his network all evening. “I promise, your work won’t be wasted.”

“Never is,” Lestrade says. He shrugs into his overcoat and steps toward the door, then pauses, looking back over his shoulder. “Why don’t you come out and get a beer with me? The Burning Bush has started making their own nut brown. Hear it’s pretty good.”

Mycroft huffs. “Oh, I don’t think…”

“Come on,” Lestrade says, and turns, as though Mycroft has already agreed. “I’ll drive you on over.”

Mycroft blinks, and frowns—but by then he’s already grabbed his umbrella and his own coat, and started for the door, trailing after the blazing comet of Lestrade’s smile.

Yes, Mycroft is what he is, and by that very fact, he will not change. He is private, reserved, set in his ways. He will not reach out. He can’t imagine it.

But Lestrade? Another matter altogether. The wonder is that Mycroft has never asked himself who has held him and Lestrade together this past decade and more.

After all. Charm trumps all, and Lestrade is the master of charm.


End file.
